Holy shit we won!!! 3 man back line looked good. Abubakar had an excellent debut. More or less what I saw from him in Pitt. Glad he finally got a chance. Crognale and Naess, and then Williams, were good as well. Abu had literally his best game for us. No complaints. Finally won when he started haha. Manneh walked around for 59 minutes and 55 seconds, but had a glorious 5 seconds of giving a fvck and scored a nice goal. This will all suck in a few weeks though when GB ignores that the 3 man back line works well for us pretty much every time we use it. That the defense isn't shit when Mensah isn't playing. That we have young guys in Crognale and Abubakar who can contribute right now. Back to basics v Philly in 3 weeks is my biggest fear. We've all hoped GB would learn from games like this before, and he never does. I REALLY REALLY hope this time is different, but if anything other than a 3 man back line is rolled out v Philly, minus Mensah, then I won't be terribly shocked, but I will be disappointed, because that will be confirmation that there is no hope for GB.
With all the CBs we have and defensive problems I don't understand why we don't use a 5 man back line but both the 352 and 343 have got us road victories so we should prob stay with those formations on the road
Your Pulisic comments are total nonsense, but this is 100% spot on. I'd play 3 in the back at home as well though.
Now we Need Chicago and NYFC toblise tomorrow and Orlando -TFC to draw It sucks that we are always a gm ahead anyone know at what point we become even on games played
Minny played like the Crew on Saturday. A lot of puttering around without any confidence going forward. They only had six shots, one on frame. Crew were also frustrating as usual but you got to factor in the short turnaround, on an artificial surface in the heat. Lot of interesting questions. The defense is the big one. Mensah pretty much played himself out, but who knows with G3. Also, finding a way to get Manneh more involved both mentally and in the starting 11 with Meram. Take the 3 although it was a ragged affair. Long Gold Cup break awaits.
We probably should have won by 2 or 3. Kamara and Meram had very good chances in the 2nd and should have put one or two away. Good result, good performance, but no reason to get excited. Minnesota is not good.
Yes, the two big questions after this game are: 1) Defense is better with 3 CBs instead of 2 CBs, and also without Mensah. GB has shown time and time again a refusal to ditch the 4-2-3-1, despite us playing well damn near every time we play the 3-4-3. 2) Manneh is a left winger, pure and simple. I don't care that he's listed as a forward, he's a left sided attacker, plain and simple. He was shit on the right for us, and for Vancouver. There is a reason 90% of the games he played with Vancouver he played on the left, and damn near all his goals and assists are from that side of the field too. Meram is also a left sided attacker. He isn't as good when he plays centrally, and by that I mean starts centrally. He needs to drift into the middle to be effective. This is a bit of a head scrather no doubt. Neither guy will be happy with a sub role. And Meram never uses his left foot. I don't ever see him playing on the right. He's not much of a crosser either.
Meram would have been more effective on the right wing with his left leg duct taped behind his back than Finlay was all game, or has been all season for that matter. Like usual, the sub happened 15 minutes later than it should have, and for the wrong guy.
Finlay can't catch a break. Manneh was garbage, but managed to have a few good minutes. Ethan was okay, but couldn't manage to get a goal with several good opportunities. Ola was horribly ineffective. It scares me every time Williams gets the ball. He's good for 1-2 horrible turnovers on D a game. Abu was better than his normal badness, but still meh. Abubakar was good. Better than Mensah...
Kekuta Manneh is a difference maker. I've been told by several that he walks, he jogs, he doesn't have a position. Cool. Here are some other issues with Manneh, he actually runs at players with the ball, he goes direct to goal, he shoots from distance. It's a shock to the system to opposing teams (and our own fans) lulled to sleep by Berhalter's system. These are things we desperately need in this team. Here's hoping he continues to see minutes in the second half of the season. I'll take "59 minutes and 55 seconds" of garbage and 3 points from a moment of brilliance every week.
Isn't that the same thing we heard about Mendoza? I would rather have Justin Meram and Ola Kamara out there running their asses off for 90 minutes than Manneh jogging, because Manneh is only going to be good enough to pull that shtick off until he's 27 and then he's done.
True goal scorers are in a different class, IMHO. You can't really teach it or coach it--you either have the knack--or you don't. (sure, a coach can help with technique and confidence--but not that knack). I'm not sure I want him as a starter most weeks. But a "joker" (as the Europeans call it). Yep. Works for me. And for the reasons you state. And I do think we need to lay one point to bed. GGG has been willing to change formations this season--much more than last year. That's a plus in his evolution as a coach.
I was happy to see some fight. While Steffen came close to getting thrown out, I like that it looks like he gave a sh!t. And Abubakar and even Finlay got in on it. Naess looked good until he went out. Very clever passing. Too bad he went out injured. This game re-affirmed my hatred of turf and soccer. There were several times when the ball just bounced wrong. TURF HATE.
He causes problems with his pace and directness. It's the same thing that made Finlay successful (though he's less predictable and a better dribbler than Ethan). He'll have some bad touches and make some dumb passes, but the way he constantly attacks is something the offense needs. I'd love to see what Justin can do drifting inside from the right. It would be a bit of a shock to the system and if it doesn't work, Justin should be our left wing starter over Manneh, but it's worth a shot given how ineffective Ethan has been this season.
Just going back to this because I've seen it floating around Twitter: Zack wasn't in any real trouble of being thrown out. He was booked for delay (understandable), and then when he was fouled a couple minutes later, Cronin sorta charged at him. Zack was pissed when he got up because although the contact wasn't bad, it's still a dangerous move and Cronin escaped without a booking (while Zack had just been booked for wasting about 3 seconds). Zack was probably also yelling at the referee as a way to waste some more time (which is a pretty easy way to waste more time because the referee is more concerned about explaining the decision rather than continuing play). Zack then demonstrated what Cronin did to him. Apparently Minnesota fans thought the ref was trying to make the referee flinch. If the referee interpreted Zack's actions as such, Zack would've been given a straight red card (let alone a second yellow). Luckily, the ref wasn't an idiot, understood what Zack was saying, and then diffused the situation so they could continue playing. Zack wasn't in trouble. After the game he was still pissed and jawing at Cronin. That's fine, he didn't go shove him or do anything that would've warranted a second yellow. He was never in danger of being sent off.
Yeah, I don't think anyone is asking for him to start ahead of Meram. Meram is arguably our most dynamic attacking player (him or Pipa) and even last night as soon as Meram came on we looked a different team. That said, for all the "jogging" he does he can be an extremely effective player for us and does a lot to keep opposing defenses off balance.
I'm sure Conor Casey felt the same way last year. I think last week was the first time I ever saw a visiting goalkeeper get the yellow for stalling, they gave it to Hesmer 5 times or more each year. Our officiating is not really very even or remotely predictable.
That is putting a lot of faith into a ref's judgment, a very young ref, to a) figure out he was not coming at him b) not to give a card for dissent c)also not giving him another card for stalling, if that is what he was doing.
The best thing about this game, obviously, is that we won it. Three road points are nothing to sneeze at. There were a couple bright spots as well. Crognale did a very nice job anchoring the back 3 and Lalas demonstrated that he can be a serviceable player. Meram proved once again that he's a top player in this league. His skill and composure when he entered were instantly recognizable as being above all the other guys out there from both teams. The 3-man midfield of Trapp, Abu and Jiminez was pretty much garbage. Not sure there is a creative bone amongst them. MN were just worse or unable to exploit them. The turf certainly didn't help either team, all the players were getting the ball caught in their feet all night. Abu was better this game, but still had loose passes, not very many completed forward passes and chased a lot on defense.
Without audio it looks bad. But if Steffen said, "He charged into me like this," or something of the sort before doing it, no big deal. Replace that with, "you mother****er!" and you have an obvious red card.
Given that the referee didn't immediately brandish a red card (or at least a second yellow), I think you can safely assume that Zack didn't physically or verbally threaten the referee.
As bad as Findlay looks for long stretches of the game, the move he put on the defender on the endline late was spectacular. Too bad he went for the tight angle shot instead of cutting it back to the penalty spot.